Our employee survey continues to play a vital role in enabling understanding and acknowledgment of how employees feel about working at Legal & General. It also highlights key areas requiring focus to enable us to achieve our goals and ambitions for next year and beyond. This year saw the highest level of feedback, with a response rate of 79% (2008: 77%).
Results showed increased co-operation between departments and improved confidence in employees feeling safe to speak up and challenge the way things are done in their division. However, results indicated that decision making and taking action were two areas that need improvement.
In addition to our employee survey, we have introduced a programme called ‘What Matters’ to help us to identify and align what is important to our customers, our employees and our business. The objectives of the programme are to empower our employees to identify what they can change, provide employees with a more external focus and to create a plan of action for change at Legal & General. This progress is integral to encouraging greater employee engagement with Company strategy and developing a high performing culture across the organisation.
Changes have already been made to some of our working policies and practices in response to feedback. Programmes are underway to improve the quality and visibility of our leadership and the articulation of our strategy alongside practical measures including the introduction of a new print management system across all sites. Our ‘Ideas in Action’ programme continues to encourage employee suggestions for continuous improvement to our business and our customers’ experience of dealing with us.
Our management development team are supporting these changes through the leadership programme being run with management teams. This focuses on the core skills a manager needs in leadership and motivation, setting goals linked to strategy, developing high performing teams and building on people’s strengths to maximise their talent. This is closely linked to our focus on improving employee engagement.
Our policy is to treat employees without discrimination and to operate equal opportunity employment practices designed to achieve this end. The Group’s policy on diversity includes giving full and fair consideration to applications for employment made by disabled persons; to continue, wherever possible, the employment of staff who become disabled and to provide equal opportunities for the training and career development of disabled employees.
In 2009 our Equality and Diversity Committee has focused on disability and on how to encourage further application and recruitment. This has included looking at how and where we advertise vacancies.
